Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Rabbis and Christian theologians alike have noted the absence of the word "good" on the second day of Creation, but have not agreed on why it is not there. The text of Genesis 1:6-8 is facially consistent with a scenario in which the four space/time dimensions "blew out" as the result of the actions of cosmic intelligences.

And God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. (Gen. 1:6-8.)

Picture four out of twelve dimensions shattering, with ten times the mass of our observable universe hurtling out into space and time in all directions. Picture the horror and the grief of those intelligences unshaken at the center. This tragedy would separate what we call "Heaven" from what we know as the material universe--and nobody could ever call it "good."

Monday, November 14, 2011

Those of us who were born into time and space think of it as natural. We accept the laws of physics as not only given, but as good--they enable carbon atoms to exist and join into complex chains that make biology possible. But humans may well suffer from a four-dimensional provincialism that can't imagine the horrible limits space and time would impose on a being from before the Big Bang.

Imagine a multidimensional sphere one Planck length across which contains at least ten times the mass of our observable universe. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle would permit any particle to move at any speed from 0 to the speed of light anywhere within these boundaries--so the constraints of physics as you and I know them would not apply within this hypersphere. If intelligent beings emerged within this sphere, they would appear as gods or angels to us.

Now imagine the perfect symmetry of that sphere distended for some reason. Perhaps a hundred trillion angels choose to follow a single leader leader in one orbit and their combined mass creates a bulge in hyperspace. Let that orbit expand until it exceeds the Planck length and their perfect freedom becomes constrained at Heisenberg's limit. If nothing pulls them back, the bulge could turn into a blow-out--the universe's first environmental disaster.

What happens to a hundred trillion intelligences hurled out of Heaven into space?